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Mel Lastman is the exuberant mayor of Toronto, a personality that Toronto residents either loved or hated.

Mel Lastman became wealthy and well known by owning a discount furniture store (in which the slogan goes "Who's better than Bad Boy? Nooooooooooooobody!"-- amazingly annoying). First elected as mayor of the former Borough of North York in 1972, Lastman became the first mayor of the amalgamated City of Toronto on January 2, 1998, defeating former (original City of) Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall.

He was re-elected in November 2000 with an 80% majority. His closest opponent, civic activist Tooker Gomberg, drew just over 8% of the vote. However, Lastman showed his political canniness by adopting Gomberg's three main campaign planks: committing Toronto to 100% recycling diversion by 2010 to replace the controversial Adams Mine Dump plan, agreeing with then–Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to end Toronto's homelessness crisis with a C$700M injection of funds (which were never delivered), and appointing, as his very first act of office on re-election, Jane Jacobs, the ethicist and urbanist and probably Toronto's most celebrated activist, to head the Toronto Charter Committee to explore the potential for more autonomy for Toronto. Jacobs had publicly endorsed Gomberg.

Since his re-election, Lastman has faced a number of challenges including:

• publicization of an extra-marital affair
• loss of the 2008 Summer Olympics to Beijing, after some controversial and seemingly racist comments by Lastman had offended many African countries
• a garbage strike in the midst of a visit by Pope John Paul II to Catholic World Youth Day in 2002
• the worst outbreaks of SARS in North America in early 2003
• the 2003 US-Canada blackout which brought the city to an utter standstill, requiring evacuation of people from Toronto Transit Commission subways, and office buildings.

Some, including his own staff according to rumour, call him Krusty the Klown, making Toronto under his administration akin to Kamp Krusty. He does have a reputation for preferring "bread and circuses" projects including putting hundreds of variously decorated plastic moose statues all through the city in a blatant rip-off of a similar art project involving cows in Chicago.

He is slated to retire in November, 2003.

quotes

• "When have you ever heard the United States take the blame for anything? This is no different." - Mel Lastman, questioned on the origins of the 2003 US-Canada blackout